Designologue
A vintage image 
thadwiddle
i really dig it. i like the way you wove the plate metal into the horse skin. great work. looking forward to this one.
that horse is the next Tony Hawk.
He can totally half pipe.
I have to say that the History recorded in a Sketchbook would be pretty ill. To see the man upstairs’ private notebook of illicit earth activities, would be priceless.
thadwiddle this one’s kinda dirty…some of the texture is an old map of inverness-shire. too mangled to really tell, but it is :D
i like this one.. altho, im not sure im happy about seeing a photograph in a drawing thread.. otherwise.. im digging it..
re: the photograph…i was trying to get this to look like a journal. the artist (whoever he is) is keeping track of how public these “confidential” projects get.
and if i didn’t put the photo, i’m not sure anyone get that it’s the loch ness monster.
hey, when am i gonna get some constructive criticism, people? c’mon…unleash the hounds!
The hounds huh? Well I only have a horde of sleepy house cats, will that do?
Critique: I think this latest image looks a little flat. There are three parts to this image, and they are all very close in size and contrast. The result is that these “pieces” sort of look as if they are floating on the picture plane. Dramatically blowing up the nessy sketch, and dramatically reducing the photo would help ground the composition.
I am not terribly fond of the confidential drawings seal. It just looks clumsy and heavy-handed in execution. Reducing the line-weight and tightening up the space between the lines and the type might help. Making it look like an actual stamp would lend it some visual credibility as well.
I generally like what you have done so far, including your one-offs. Ah… a fresh ‘louger just sharpening her teeth! I look forward to seeing where this, and future, designolougues of yours go.
shit, thadwiddle, your complaining about critisim, while no one even had a chance to se my image…
i’ll give you some critisism..
i was so inspired by your first image that i used it as a pallete for #2…. i think you could have made an effort to use more of the original 2 in the third image… instead you sorta cleaned the slate and started over…i think the background texture is nice and dirty but doesnt change much from your first image… i already told you my dislike for the photo, altho it is well placed on this page… i like the drawings of the funny creature… and the way you changed the confidential stamp to include the horse.. to me, it just feels to disconected from where we were in the begining… plus, i dont think the site is getting its usual traffic so the comments are low…
sorry, ben. it was selfish of me to ask for criticism when i didn’t comment on your img :(
i really liked how you kept the color and dirtyness of img1 and the blocky texture in the background was really cool. the repetition of the horse img looked nice, but i think they could have dramaticly varied in size…maybe have one cropped by going off the edge of the canvas.
we didn’t talk to much about where this was going conceptually…my bad for keeping my thoughts to myself :) i was thinking of using different drawings for each img….but i didn’t consider how they’d all work together.
p.s. happy new years!
p.s. thanks.
it’s all good, this is a learning process. in general, i am very impressed with your skills and we will just keep going at it.
that’s awesome! very clever use of the first image and i’m glad you patched the horse’s eye. so happy this dsnlg is going in a different direction than before. (what was i thinking? nessie?)
i like the propaganda-ish feel of this one a lot. is konfidential really a word?
propoganda is a good way of describing what i was aiming for.. glad you like it.. i was thinking nazi propoganda for some reason.. so thats where the Konf part comes from… i didnt mean it in any politcal way.. not meant to be offensive..
k is the new x. sneaking it into words instantly increases their value.
I like the box, I gave you a 3 but I’ve got problems with it. I’m not too crazy about the background. looks like you had an idea for a square composition and just dropped it in there with some filler. its too symmetrical for me. I think you coulda made better use of it in the space. maybe thadwiddle will (now is that ‘thad widdle’ or ‘tha dwiddle’ or just ‘thatdwiddle’?) also, I think’d add to its oldness (if that’s what you’re goin for), if the colors on the box were less saturated.
-linkoln
i don’t think it’s offensive. it’s not like you’re advocating nazism. there’s a whole technique to making propaganda material. it’s a fascinating study. (and disturbing…)
it’s “thad widdle” as in “thaddeus widdle.” the story can be read in my screening questions.
oh, i am such a dork.
yea, i really could have moved it around and worked it more.. but i was so into just making the box that i sorta just wanted to post it… i should have taken it a bit further.
the horse swazi is pretty damn creepy. are the eyelids sewn shut?
more like clone stamped shut.. but yea, he’s eyeless becuase its konfidential.
i’ll have img5 up in a couple days prolly. i feel obligated to keep this horse image since it’s the only real consistancy between the first 4 images. when did this ever become a horse dsnlg? (oh, yeah…that would be my fault).
i don’t even like horses. they chase me in my dreams.
Nioe. How’s that old adage go? Oh right, “You can lead a dead horse to water but you can’t make it drink because it’s dead.”
One thing I’ve been noticing in my own work is that everything is so perpendicular. It may be because lines render better at 90 degrees because of the low screen resolution we’re working with or maybe I’m just an anal neat freak.
I think that if this image has a fault it’s that. I would have liked to have seen at least the horse kompas on a 15 degree angle or even something a little less regular.
What was your motivation for the tank and the city? What’s that green stuff?
I think it’s the nazi / war time propoganda from the last image that made her think of the tank … that’s my interpretation.. i like the image.. but we may have gotten away from any “drawing.”
Altho, i guess theres some measure marks on the tank.. so that’s sorta confidential drawings like..
i dig that green stuff..
the green stuff is from an image i found. i thought it looked like moldy cheese and would increase the dirtyness of the composition. originally, i was using the buildings just for texture (and what’s dirtier than a big city?). i liked the contrast between the industrial feel of the photo and the ancient connotations of the compass. similarly, the first image of the trojan horse was all metal and gears - an insturment of war - which is why i used the tank. also, the tank referenced to [the politics of] img04 and served as the “confidential drawing” of this img.
I agree with inman on the horse icon thing. Also I would move it either farther off, or on the composition. The way that the “W” is barely hanging on the page creates an awkward visual tension.
The space under the white area looks trapped and awkward as well. I would either make the entire bottom of the image white, or move the white strip up. Also I think the choice of white for the strip is visually jarring with the rest of the image. Everything else is sepia tones and antique looking, but the white is very stark and flat. The way in which it crops the photo of the buildings is a little uncomfortable as well.
I like the treatment of the photo, and all the other elements. It’s just the white doesn’t seem to have the same delicate attention to detail.
Maybe you are trying to tell bharper to stop resorting to the cliche of Nazi iconography with your text? lol
I agree.
I’m not sure if this one totaly rocks.. or if its not much of an improvement from the last.. all those textures had me zoomed in.. like wow..
It’s an attractive image, but it seems like we are getting farther and farther away from any semblance of a concept here. What is the point of all this?
Yea, i guess thats true. Sometimes I get sucked up in a way something looks and forget about the concept.
I guess for me, we sorta lost the concept back with the loch ness, or killed the concept some how.. i just didnt want to start listing all these historic mysterys… im not sure where this should go realy…
i dunno. i had a concept for img01, but bharper liked the image so much that, i think, he just wanted to design around that for img02. then with the third, i tried to bring it back to what my concept was originally. in the process i didn’t take much from img2 (tho i did subtly incorporate the orange color and the horse). with img04, bharper seemed to be still attached to the horse image, so i thought, “eh, he wants to keep the horse, i’ll keep the horse. perhaps i’ll bring some humor into it to deviate from any political ideas.” now i’m not sure what to do with img6. it’s a nice image, and i’m glad to see visual continuity…but i’ll have to ponder this for a while. i don’t know where this will go.
maybe thadwiddle, your first image captured the concept so well, there was nothing left for us to explore. Maybe the concept itself is shallow. Or most likely, maybe im just no good with concept. That was one of my goals in working on dsnlgs was to get good at the art of visual communication. But i can’t seem to get it. Any suggestions are appreciated.
alright. i know what i’m going to do now. i just need to disappear for a while.
[…and with that, she vanished into the misty fog of the city streets.]
The thing I come up against most is not really having anything to say. Before you can communicate visually you need to have something to communicate. Then you need the experienced design vocabulary to conceive of how you are going to say it. Then you need the skills to implement that vision. Finally you need an audience astute enough to read your meaning. It’s like Homer says, “It takes two lie Marge - one to lie and one to listen.”
Sometimes I feel like I’m speaking with the equivalent of a 4 year old’s vocab. I think it comes down to more exposure to well-conceived art, first understanding what it communicates, then understanding how it communicates and then how it avoids communicating something else.
There’s a negative and positive space of communication. What you don’t say is almost more important than what you do say. Take half of this rambling for example. :D
As for this image, it really just a stage for a statement. But since you didn’t have a direction that statement wasn’t there to be made.
BTW what’s the significance of the glowing “c?”
so much wisdom in this man
I mean that…fa’reals
Thanks for your comments Inman. It really helps to hear you break it down like that. I think the problem with this last image, as you mentioned, is that I had nothing to communicate.
I find that sometimes I get more into “process” art, where I just sort of go with the flow and see where it takes me.
There is a risk associated with this method, but sometimes you can stumble apon something new and unexpected.
I guess having a goal, or a message to communicate would help regardless of the method. With a message in mind, I could still do process driven work, but in the end check to see if the art matches the intended message.
I think the main problem is that I like to talk alot but really don’t have much to say.
I was actually thinking about this while I laid in bed this morning.
Maybe, we are trying to articulate themes that are too abstract or just too difficult. Maybe to get better at actual visual communication we could do dsnlgs about themese that are more simple or that lend themselves to communication.
I think this is why the Highschool Notebook dsnlg was so succesful. The words and the social nature of the piece realy communicated alot.
I think these issues are really at the crux of my artistic frustration and I really appreciate the opportunity to disccuss them.
And as far as the glowing C goes, it real has no significance. Origonaly it was a “25” but that seemed to boring.
The ç isn’t for confidential?
(Sorry if that letter doesn’t show for you, it’s the french c-thing.)
oh, yea.. it’s for confidential, i forgot!
whats up with miss thatious wood widdler?
i’m working on it. hold your horses.
ha. I love puns. I bet you were taking your time just so you could say that
yeah, i was.
I think funs are pun.
;P
yay! i’m done.
i really like this one.
this one is great. did you draw the left panel?
yeah, i drew it. i had several different ideas going into this, but i eventually opted to draw something myself.
I love the patina feel on the one on the right.
crickets chirping
no one seemed to get my NEIGHborhood pun. oh well.
[/shrug]
bharper im not sure if this image is compelling or not.. it felt interesting to me.
this is cool, ben. first impression was “what the heck?” but when i looked at it more closely, i think i saw what you were going for. it sorta reminds me of a rifle, but it also feels geographical by the shape of the “handle.” peninsula-like :D
Not so sure of the use of the transparency aspect of the PNG file. Doesn’t really DO anything for the image. Otherwise I like it.
it’s not transparent. but thanks for the complimento.
i am a painter by birth, so sometimes i revert back to that.
secret sketches revealed! if only history was recorded in sketchbook form :)